The hidden value of peer review in scientific research

A small but significant milestone. When I was invited to become a reviewer for the journal Review of Scientific Instruments (published by AIP), I realized something about reviewing that I hadn't realized before: it's not a simple job that almost no one sees.

Reviewer anonymity

You read the manuscript line by line, questioning whether the evidence supports the conclusions, and evaluating the experimental design, loss functions, and ablations, the theory, and how well the evaluation protocol matches reality. And you do all this anonymously, without attention from the public.

Such a quiet craft and a good reminder of how technical this field has become. Evaluating modern work in neural networks means interacting with both mathematics and engineering aspects.

And if you are at the beginning of your scientific career and someday get the opportunity to review, I think you should take advantage of it. You will learn surprisingly much about your own work by carefully studying others'. And despite this anonymous craft, your contribution to the scientific community will be valued and noted in ORCID.